1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for searching for a device on a network, and particularly to a device search system for displaying a device which has been found and its location information understandably.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, there has been provided a method of efficiently finding and using various sources (a printer, a server unit, a scanner, etc.) connected to a network, which is called a directory service.
The above directory service is, in a sense, a phone directory related to a network, which is used for storing various types of information. As a specific example of a directory system with the above directory service, there is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), for example. Provisions of the above LDAP are described in standard specifications, RFC (request for comments) 1777 issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
By using the above directory service to search for device terminal equipments connected to a network, for example, you can obtain a network address list of the device terminal equipments usable on the network.
In the above list, however, it is impossible to obtain location information of devices to be used which is easy to understand.
By way of example of a network printer as a device, it has been desired to achieve a system capable of notifying a user understandably of hierarchical location information of the device such as, for example, “where is a printer nearest my location on my floor” or “what location in the building is a printer capable of outputting a color image.”
Furthermore, conventionally it has been desired to achieve a system capable of understandably notifying a user of information on a location of a printer which has been used for printing, on whether or not printing requested by the user is normally completed, or on an occurrence of an error such as a paper jam or paper empty condition if an execution of printing or the like is requested of an information processing unit on the network.